Nebraska Football: A closer look at Casey Thompson’s first Husker game

The Nebraska football team might have lost to the Northwestern Wildcats on Saturday but by and large, new quarterback Casey Thompson’s first outing as the Huskers quarterback was a nice performance.

Thanks to two interceptions (an argument could be made that both should have been catches by his receivers) Thompson’s first start for Nebraska looks a little worse than it was. An offense that had problems moving the ball didn’t help either.

It’s true that Thompson’s finish to the game was quite a bit rockier than his start. He completed just 6 of 15 passes to end the game and did have those two interceptions. However, when looking at his first start with the Nebraska football team as a whole, the most apt descriptor is “very good.”

25 of 42 for 355 yards will never go in the books as a bad game. However, a deep dive at some advanced metrics shows just how good a performance he had.

By PFF’s measures, it just happens to be one of the best starts by a Husker quarterback in the Frost era.

Thompson finished the game with an 81.1 grade against Northwestern and a 79.8 pure passing grade, thanks in no small part to the advanced metrics showing that one of his two interceptions was a pass that should have never been an interception. His other turnover was borderline his fault.

For all the talk about how good Wildcats’ quarterback Ryan Hilinski looked on Saturday, he actually graded out a bit lower, posting a 79.0 offensive grade and a 77.7 passing grade.

Nebraska football’s newest quarterback will likely spend the season being compared to former four-year starter and current Kansas State starter Adrian Martinez. It’s worth noting that Martinez had only one game last year where he posted a better grade and that was against FCS Fordham.

The closest Adrian came last year to matching Casey’s first Husker start came against Oklahoma when he notched an 80 grade but only a 75.7 passing offense grade.  In fact, over the course of his career, Adrian had three games where he graded out better against an FBS opponent and they were all in his freshman year.

We all remember how excited we were to see what he could do after his rookie campaign. It turns out he really didn’t even progress.

Just to rub salt in that wound, in Adrian’s Week 0 outing last year, he graded out at an atrocious 62.3 and his passing grade was an even worse 60 grade.

As for Thompson, there’s a real reason to be excited for what his Nebraska football future might hold, even if his first outing fell short of legendary.

The former Texas Longhorn had just two games a year ago where he graded out better. Against Texas Tech, he posted an eye-popping 92.9, and against Oklahoma, he had an 85.5 grade.

The counterargument is that the newest Nebraska football signal caller was playing against a bad Northwestern team. My first rebuttal to that is that in a 56-7 win over Northwestern, Adrian managed just a 67-grade game. In other words, Northwestern not being all that good doesn’t guarantee a quarterback performance like the college football world saw on Saturday.

The better argument is that it was just one game, and Thompson could come out and lay some real stinkers over the next 11 games. While that’s certainly something that could happen, the fact of the matter is that Casey Thompson’s first go-round as a Nebraska football quarterback was better than most realize.